450 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1911. 
hard pressed by hunger cattle will eat cactuses, spines and all, even 
attacking the very spiny chollas. The joints of the chollas are readily 
detached from the plants and are often seen clinging to the animals’ 
bodies. 
In some parts of the Southwest the young pads of the prickly pear 
are prepared for human food, the tender joints being peeled and 
cooked in various ways. They are not likely to become a popular 
vegetable since they are nearly flavorless and their large amount of 
mucilaginous matter is unpleasant to most people. The joints have 
been used as poultices and their juice is occasionally employed in siz- 
ing rough walls preparatory to the application of paper. 
The fruit of the prickly pear, known as the tuna (pl. 4, B), is highly 
prized in Mexico, where it is gathered in great quantities. The kinds 
growing there have larger and more palatable fruits than any of the 
New Mexican forms. Some of the northern species produce a dry 
fruit consisting of little but spines and seeds, and consequently 
inedible. Others of the tunas are large and juicy and beautifully col- 
ored, but even they have large seeds. The fruit has a pleasant flavor 
‘and a taste for it does not have to be acquired, as it must for so many 
of the unusual tropical or semitropical fruits. Some of the other 
cactuses have still better flavored fruits, best of all being those borne 
by the different species of Echinocereus. In this genus the seeds are 
small and can be eaten along with the pulp. In the earlier days, and 
to some extent at the present time, the different cactus fruits were 
gathered by the Indians, who ate the fresh ones either raw or cooked, 
and often dried them in the sun for use in winter. The tunas are cov- 
ered with very fine spines which must be removed, the Indians resort- 
ing to small brushes of dried grass for the purpose. The Echinocereus 
fruits, besides being much more finely flavored than the tunas, are 
easier to eat because they are protected only by large spines that are 
easily removed with the fingers when the fruit is fully ripe. 
Tunas have not been utilized extensively in New Mexico by recent 
immigrants who often eat them when they happen upon ripe fruits 
but seldom make any definite effort to gather them im quantity. 
Sometimes they are collected and their juice extracted and used in 
the preparation of jellies and sirups, the products thus obtained com- 
paring favorably in flavor and appearance with any similar ones from 
other fruits. It has been discovered that a valuable colormg matter, 
a rich red similar to that of cochineal, can be extracted from them to 
be used in tinting candies and pastry. The prickly pear, inciden- 
tally, is often a host of the cochineal insect which in spring and early 
summer often completely covers the plants with its white webs. 
In the southern part of New Mexico, on the mesas bordering the 
Rio Grande, is one of the most remarkable cactuses, known as the fish- 
hook or barrel cactus or viznaga (Echinocactus wislizeni, pl. 6, A). 
